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CIAO DATE: 02/06
Shi'i Separatism in Iraq. Internet Reverie or Real Constitutional Challenge?
Reidar Visser
2005
Abstract
This paper deals with non-conformist ideas among Iraqi Shi‘is about the territorial integrity of the modern state of Iraq.
Two findings are presented. First, new Internet communications technology has enabled radical Shi‘is outside the main clerical, intellectual and political establishments to propagate visions of an independent Shi‘i state for the areas south of Baghdad, a scheme that runs counter to a robust and long-standing anti-separatist tradition among wider sections of the Shi‘i community. Secondly, by choosing the Internet as their primary modus operandi, the Shi‘i separatists also expose their relative weakness vis-à-vis other and less radical trends in Iraqi Shi‘i society.
In the Iraqi political process there is a need for a more realistic approach to what is seen as the “menace” of “Shi‘i separatism”. The evidence from the Internet suggests that, as of August 2005, advocates of outright secession are still peripheral to the Shi‘i community as a whole, and that there are fairly good prospects for the Shi‘is staying committed to the framework of a unified Iraq – albeit a decentralised and probably federalised one. At the same time, there are notable areas of rhetorical convergence between the Internet separatists and two more material (and to some extent mutually incompatible) political projects currently afoot in the Shi‘i community – a one-year old bid to establish a federal (non-sectarian) entity limited to the southernmost parts of the Shi‘i areas (Basra–Nasiriyya–‘Amara), and a more recent scheme to create a larger and specifically Shi‘i canton covering all Shi‘i territory south of Baghdad. Should the constitutional process fail to reconcile these projects with each other and with other competing Shi‘i and broader Iraqi currents, the scenario of spillover effects from the more radical separatist project cannot be excluded. Especially pertinent in this regard are recent constitutional proposals to eliminate the ceiling on the number of existing provinces allowed to amalgamate into federal entities – a move that would facilitate territorial expressions of sectarianism in Iraqi politics instead of checking them.
